


How Carlos Got His Third Eye

by lea_hazel



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Body Horror, Cecil Is a Good Boyfriend, Community: trope_bingo, Gen, M/M, Transformation, Trope Bingo Round 2, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 07:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has a sudden, embarrassing emergency, Cecil is a good boyfriend, and Dana is a bona fide member of the press.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Carlos Got His Third Eye

This is the story of how Carlos the scientist got his third eye. It was a fine, bright day in the friendly desert community of Night Vale. The sun was shining, the heat was not too intense, and stealth helicopters whirred placidly through a cloudless blue sky. Cecil and Dana were just about ready to take their eleven o'clock coffee break when Cecil got an urgent text message from his new boyfriend, Carlos (you know, the scientist).

Cecil, of course, became very alarmed and immediately rushed to Carlos's lab, near Big Rico's Pizza. One never knows what can go wrong when a stranger relocates to Night Vale. Not being familiar with our ways, Carlos the scientist might still be confused about how to deal with hooded figures, the Sheriff's secret police, or the odd smell that lives in the corner of Second Street, next to the abandoned laundromat. Cecil is a very good boyfriend, and always ready to jump to Carlos's aid when the latter is confronted by a perplexing situation. You know how socially awkward scientists can be.

Dana, formerly Cecil's intern and now a salaried, fully-realized and sporulating staff member of Night Vale Community Radio, remained in the station to mind the equipment, field phone-calls, and make excuses should Station Management appear to question Cecil's absence. She's a real pal. Not many people would be willing to stay behind when you play hooky to see your boyfriend in the middle of the workday, especially when lying to Station Management might lead to an extra session of HR training. She even spent the time looking over resumès for new interns.

Imagine her surprise when she got a text message from Cecil, not ten minutes later, reassuring her that all was well in the lab and there was nothing to worry about. Naturally she became very concerned. When there is nothing to worry about, that is a worrying thing indeed. No right-minded person would fail to be worried under such, well, _worrying_ circumstances. Her Facebook statuses from the time period between eleven fifteen and eleven forty five were oblique, yet deeply troubling, in the way only a true journalist's updates could be.

Dana, who is rightfully proud of her newfound status as a legitimate journalist, set aside her personal concerns about Cecil and Carlos's apparent safety to compose a brief update about the affair for the afternoon news. People in Night Vale expect to receive such news during their lunch break, and delivering it in an accurate, yet prompt manner is one of the duties of a Night Vale Community Radio employee, second only to sporulation in its importance. Dana has very good work ethic. That's one of the reasons the station was so happy to have her.

Meanwhile, at the laboratory, Cecil was comforting a distraught Carlos, reassuring him that these things really do happen to everyone, sooner or later, and it's nothing to be embarrassed about. It is an open secret that one of the reasons why Carlos keeps his bangs so heavy even when he cuts his hair tragically short, is because he suffers from a bad case of adult acne, especially incongruent when taken alongside his premature graying. Everyone just indulges him, because he's such a nice guy and he says such nice things about our little desert community.

Lately, though, more than one Night Vale resident noticed Carlos behaving even more oddly than usual. Of course Cecil was the last to know, so he was duly surprised when he entered the lab and found Carlos, red-faced and obviously rattled, wearing a knitted cap despite the intense desert heat. He warned him most sternly about heat exhaustion, which can be a serious problem even indoors due to the intermittent reality of all ceilings and roofs. After fetching him a glass of ice water and some of Old Woman Josie's special smelling salts (patent pending) for good measure, Cecil finally managed to get the whole story out of him.

Since arriving in Night Vale, Carlos has found his adolescent acne, long thought dormant, resurging with surprising intensity. At first he attributed it to the profuse sweating due to the oppressive heat, and the equally oppressive surveillance of the Sheriff's secret police. He paid greater care to his personal hygene as well as his mail and phone records, and hoped for the best. If only he had consulted Cecil, Dana, or any other resident of Night Vale, he could have saved himself a great deal on anxiety and prescription acne cleanser, used without a prescription or proper notification to the relevant authorities. That's what the shadow government helicopters are for, after all. We think.

Anyway, when he started growing this one, huge pimple right at the center of his forehead, Carlos panicked and started putting off his dates with Cecil with all sorts of weird excuses, like needing to wash his hair, having an early staff meeting the next morning, or lack of immunity to the sedative gas that sometimes seeps out of cracks in the sidewalk, especially between nine and nine thirty. Anyone other than Cecil would consider this a polite brush-off and backed off, but you know Cecil. He can never tell when someone isn't into him, isn't relationship material, or is about to become incorporealized for the next ninety nine years.

Luckily for Cecil, Carlos's callous rejection was no such thing. It was merely an understandable divergence from social protocol due to the stresses and natural hormonal fluctuations associated with the appearance of a third eye. Yes, Carlos is now a true member of our beautiful desert community, and it only took a little more than a year for him to reach this exciting milestone. Carlos is so lucky to have a sweet and attentive boyfriend to comfort him through this perfectly natural, yet understandably trying transition.

After the prerequisite reassurances, Cecil brought Carlos back to the radio station to break the good news to Dana. It took them some time to lure her out from under her desk, where she was editing the third version of a news item concerning the unnerving fact that there is nothing to worry about, but when she came out she promised to take Carlos to the pharmacy to buy eye-drops and help him plan his third eye emergence party. Carlos seemed perplexed by this local tradition. You know how scientists are, having to question every little thing, no matter how ordinary.

At least the residents of Night Vale can rest easy in knowing that Carlos the scientist is truly one of our own, and await their invitation to his emergence party, expected to arrive by mail or astral projection by no later than Friday morning. It's going to be a blast.  


End file.
